Tag Archives: Safety

Natural gas pipeline exploded in Oklahoma; seen in two other states



The most obvious risk of

that proposed natural gas pipeline

was seen in another one Monday through today in Oklahoma (and Texas and Kansas):
explosion and fire.
The pipeline proposed for here would be 44% bigger; maybe
we could have an explosion seen from Florida and Alabama!

CBS News reported today,

Okla. pipeline blast sparks huge blaze, spurs evacuations
,

Deputy Cliff Brinson, of the Harper County Sheriff’s Department,
says the fire sounded like four roaring jet engines and had flames
reaching two football fields high.

He says no injuries were reported, and residents within two miles of
the blast were evacuated.

A family of three living in a home about 200 yards away escaped
unharmed, authorities say.

By the time the pipeline company, Northern Natural Gas,
released a statement they called it “a flicker”.

Video by

Spencer Albracht
: Continue reading

Divestment is about undermining the political power of the fossil fuel industry –Tim DeChristopher

Answering

Harvard President Drew Faust’s excuses
,

Tim DeChristopher, who

went to jail for directly opposing gas and oil drilling

and is now

a student at Harvard Divinity School
,

To seriously suggest that any research will solve the climate crisis
while we continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain a
stranglehold on our democracy is profoundly naive.

Wen Stephenson
wrote for the Nation 4 October 2013,

Tim DeChristopher: There Is No ‘Neutral’ in the Climate Fight
,
including DeChristopher’s statement:



Drew Faust seeks a position of neutrality in a struggle where the
powerful only ask that people like her remain neutral. She says that
Harvard’s endowment shouldn’t take a political position, and yet it
invests in an industry that spends countless millions on corrupting
our political system. In a world of corporate personhood, if she
doesn’t want that money to be political, she should put it under her
mattress. She has clearly forgotten the words of Paolo Freire:
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to remain
neutral.”
Or as Howard Zinn put succinctly, “You can’t
be neutral on a moving train.”

She touts Continue reading

Harvard excuses for not divesting from fossil fuels

Drew Faust wants us to believe Harvard can’t figure out how to power its
own campus and vehicles on renewable solar, wind, wave, and tidal energy?


Come on, pull the other one!

President Faust wrote that
divestment would make Harvard appear “as a political actor rather than an academic institution”,
that Harvard might not make enough money,
that “Universities own a very small fraction of the market capitalization of fossil fuel companies”, and that
“I also find a troubling inconsistency in the notion that, as an
investor, we should boycott a whole class of companies at the same
time that, as individuals and as a community, we are extensively
relying on those companies’ products and services for so much of
what we do every day.”
The first three excuses would have applied just as much back in the 1980s
when

Harvard finally divested from companies dealing in apartheid in South Africa
, a symbolic, and yes, political action that contributed markedly to the
release of Nelson Mandela, the downfall of the apartheid regime, and later
the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa.

Harvard President Derek Bok, 18 May 1990,

in a letter to students

explaining the Unversity’s September 1989 decision
to divest from tobacco companies, since completed:


In reaching its decision, the corporation was motivated by a desire
not to be associated as a shareholder with companies engaged in
significant sales of products that create a substantial and
unjustified risk of harm to other human beings.

Harvard divestment was good enough for apartheid and tobacco.



In veritas, Harvard can have just as much or more influence by divesting
from fossil fuels, and that cause is even more important for the whole world.
In south Georgia truth, so can

Valdosta State University in its own region
.



Office of the President, Harvard,
3 October 2013,

Fossil Fuel Divestment Statement
;
I added the links and images, all directly related to Harvard.

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

Continue reading

Test program meeting at Plant Vogtle –NRC and Southern Company 9 October 2013



Safety at Plant Vogtle, this Wednesday, with call-in number, by
NRC and Georgia Power’s parent the Southern Company.
One hour from 1 to 2PM is the public part, then 3 more hours closed
“because the staff has determined that the
information is proprietary in nature.”
Why is nuclear testing affecting public safety proprietary?

It’s at Vogtle Training Center,
9034 River Road,
Waynesboro, GA 30830, which is

on the corner of the Plant Vogtle site
.
Do you get a tour of the construction if you appear in person?
Here’s what it looks like in
Georgia Power’s

Vogtle 3 and 4 Construction Photos
September 2013
, and on

google maps
:


View Larger Map

Here’s

the NRC meeting announcement
: Continue reading

From Seven Out in Waycross to CSX to Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County

CSX was involved directly in the

Seven Out contamination
,
storing hazardous water that leaked:
and then that water was apparently shipped to the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County.
This is in addition to the

the CSX trichloroethylene groundwater contamination
dating back to 2000 and earlier.

According to a letter from Georgia Department of Natural Resources
to BCX, Inc. of 20 July 2004,

EPA Identification Number: GAR000030007
,


  1. Twenty-seven tanks of wastewater were stored at the facility.
    Four portable tanks were storing the excess capacity of wastewater next door
    on property owned by CSX Transportation.
    These portable 10,000-gallon tanks were not labeled to indicate their contents;
  2. According to a BCX representative, one of the portable 10,000-gallon tanks
    had a gasket failure on the forward manhole which caused the release of an
    unknown substance onto the ground at the site owned by CSX
    Transportation;
  3. Dead vegetation was observed in a 15 feet by 30 feet area downgradient of the
    tank that caused the release;
  4. A yellowish-green substance was observed on the ground between the portable
    tank that had the release and another portable tank adjacent to it. There was
    also dead vegetation observed between these two tanks; and

And GA EPD tested the soil and found something the document doesn’t
specify, but whatever it was was enough that: Continue reading

CSX groundwater contamination in Waycross

The MCLG for
trichloroethylene
is zero.

Around the
Seven Out and CSX contamination areas in Waycross more than 100 people
have gotten sick or died,
most since 2000, with groundwater contamination
known since 1985, according to Joan Martin McNeal,
So the CSX problem long predates

the Seven Out problem
.
Here’s her map of the CSX property (in yellow) and contamination, sickness, and death:




brown stars: known contamination areas

red markers: confirmed deceased or confirmed cases of severe illness
mostly cancer (bone, lung, prostate, blood, colon, breast),
some severe neurological disorders, some heart failure,
with ages ranging from 4 to 85 years.

green markers: likely early stage cases of such problems

According to this February 2000


tricholoroethylene isopleth map
,

there was already extensive contamination in the CSX railyard by 2000,
extending across an internal drainage ditch that goes into the
Waycross Canal that become Tebeau Creek, running through downtown
Waycross into the Satilla River.

According to U.S. EPA,

Trichloroethylene 79-01-6 Hazard Summary-Created in April 1992; Revised in January 2000
, Continue reading

Jellyfish 1 Nuke 0



One of the world’s largest nuclear reactors was shut down Sunday by jellyfish.
Not a tsunami, not an earthquake, not a blizzard, not even hot water: jellyfish.
And it’s not the first time or the first reactor.
Tell me again how reliable centralized baseload power is?

AP reported yesterday,

Jellyfish force nuclear plant shutdown in Sweden:
Tonnes of jellyfish clog pipes that bring in cool water to the plant’s turbines



Operators of the Oskarshamn nuclear plant in southeastern Sweden had
to scramble reactor number three on Sunday after tonnes of jellyfish
clogged the pipes that bring in cool water to the plant’s turbines.

By Tuesday, the pipes had been cleaned of the jellyfish and
engineers were preparing to restart the reactor, which at 1,400
megawatts of output is the largest boiling-water reactor in the
world, said Anders Osterberg, a spokesman for OKG, the plant
operator.

All three Continue reading

Common Community Vision for Lowndes County



What do you the citizens want Lowndes County to be?
Here’s a chance to speak up, so when somebody asks where were you when
the decisions were being made, you don’t have to answer “lying on the couch
watching television.” (Thanks to Nolen Cox for that phrase.)

Corey Hull wrote on facebook today,

Help Spread the Word for the Future of Lowndes County
,

My office is conducting a survey and gathering public input on
Facebook (go to

www.facebook.com/valdostalowndesmpo
) about what they
want the Lowndes County Common Community Vision to be


(
www.bit.ly/LowndesCCV
). So far our participation has been low. I am
calling on all of you to encourage your friends, family and
colleagues to spread the word and let us know what you think about
the future of Lowndes County and its cities.

Over the next two months there will be future opportunities for
public input so stay tuned.

Thanks for your help.

On the Southern Georgia Regional Commission’s website,

Lowndes County Common Community Vision
, Continue reading

Spectra never bothered to check pipeline for corrosion –Spectra employee

So

“the pipe will be monitored 24/7”
?
That’s not Spectra’s actual practice, according to an employee
and according to a federal fine.

By fjgallagher for Natural Gas Watch 19 June 2013,

Spectra Energy Employee: We Never Bothered to Check Natural Gas Pipeline for Corrosion
,



A Spectra Energy employee acknowledged to federal inspectors that
the company never conducted key tests for corrosion on a natural gas
pipeline that was already operating at excess capacity, according to
documents recently obtained by NaturalGasWatch.org.

There’s much more in the article, including this:

Additionally, according to another May 2, 2013 letter sent under
separate cover from (PHMSA) to Holeman, Spectra failed to install
equipment to monitor whether or not the natural gas pipeline in
question was being affected by corrosion and could not produce any
records indicating that the pipeline had, in fact, ever been tested
for corrosion or that the pipeline was even structurally sound.

So that’s what
“the pipe will be monitored 24/7” means.
Good to know.

See Item 2 in that

Final Order

with fines
from the
Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)
to Spectra Energy CEO Gregory L. Ebel: Continue reading

Spectra backtracks about pipeline incident

Spectra flip-flops on major safety events as well as on
whose houses are beautiful
and

whether Georgia cities can use gas

from its pipeline from

PCB-polluted Anniston, Alabama
to Orlando, Florida.
And Spectra was fined recently for violating both federal safety requirements
and its own operating procedures, including for pipeline monitoring.
Oh, and its natural gas comes from fracking.

Remember Spectra rep Andrea Grover,

quoted by the VDT
?
Well, she’s been quoted elsewhere, too.


Mike Benard wrote for
CSRHUB 5 April 2013,

Spectra Energy ‘Backtracks’ on Methane Incident:
First: “Nothing Released …. No Smoke …. No Incident”;
Then Admits: Methane & Hydrocarbons Released
,

Spectra Energy Corporation (SE, NYSE) was forced to backtrack on
dismissive assertions it made about a nighttime incident at its huge
natural gas compressor station in Bedford County, PA, after
persistent neighbors and a reporter kept pressing the company and
state regulators for facts.

A natural gas compressor station, like the ones

Spectra says will be along its proposed AL-GA-FL pipeline
,
maybe in Dougherty County, maybe in Lowndes County; we don’t know.

Now Spectra could say this was a different kind of compressor
because it’s a different kind of operation in Pennsylvania.
What kind?
Fracking: Continue reading